#decluttering

#decluttering

The family car tends to be a bit of a black hole, with all our little daily transit needs routinely absorbed into its unfathomable depths. It's where phone chargers go to die; where water bottles roll under seats, never to be seen again; and where homework assignments and field trip permission slips disappear without a trace. I'm not saying a multi-compartment trunk organizer is going to keep that from happening, per se,

My home used to be a carefully curated museum of a life I wasn't actually living. The clothes I wore were a uniform, the decor was a decoy, and the entire space felt like a stage set for a character I was exhausted from playing. Coming out of the closet was the curtain call. The most tangible, cathartic part of the process was the great purge that followed - dismantling that set piece by piece.

Apartment Therapy's Decluttering Cure is a free two-week decluttering program that'll help you achieve a tidier home. Sign up here and get all 14 assignments delivered to your inbox. There usually comes a point in the decluttering process in which you can't decide if you really want to get rid of or keep a certain item. If you've ever faced this dilemma, there's a brilliant strategy that'll help you make a decision: the "box and banish" method. Here's how it works.

The world of kitchen decor is like a fast-moving carousel at the carnival - trends come and go at dizzying speed. You are justifiably forgiven for not wanting to refresh your entire kitchen decor every time a new trend pops up. However, there is a good chance that you are holding on to some out-of-style pieces that are silently dating your kitchen.

Cancel a subscription. Cancel anything you no longer use or read, like a streaming service, physical magazine, or digital subscription to a newspaper. Stop catalogs. You can find a number on the back of most catalogs to call and request that you be taken off the list. Get your address off junk mail lists. The Federal Trade Commission recommends using the website www.optoutprescreen.com to prevent letters for up to five years or permanently.

Before you can actuallyphysically declutter anything from your home, you have to make sure you're emotionally prepared for all of it. That's because decluttering can be both physically and mentally demanding; it requires you to make a lot of decisions on items that may have meant a lot to you at one point or another. To get ready for all the decluttering you plan to do, you must set up a guiding principle and lay out some ground rules. Here's how.

By simply taking a closer look around your space, you might be able to pick up on the kitchen storage mistakes to avoid. There is a chance that you are storing duplicate items, takeout containers, and bulky packaging that you don't really need. On a larger scale, bulky furniture might be overcrowding your space or unused gadgets might need to be kicked to the curb.

"I've always believed in the necessity of loving where you are while you are there and building a home that truly feels like home," Gail begins. "When I step through my door, I am welcomed and held by the space that I've created and curated for myself. Here I can fully let go and simply just be. The hope is that my guests, whether it be friends or family (I do love to host) will feel the same way."

I'm not talking about the clutter in an everyday way (like shoes piled by the front door, or mail all over the kitchen counter), but the things that we've intentionally filled our home with (like decorative plates and photos). Sometimes I forget that all of that stuff is creating noise in the background of our home, making it feel loud and messy even on those rare occasions when it's clean.

Every year at this time, I think of a quote from the Bible, but which I know from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, in which seven-year-old Jeanette stitches a needlepoint sampler decorated withthe inscription: The summer is ended and we are not yet saved. We are not yet saved: no, not in this house, where I experience the back-to-school week in September far more urgently than New Year's Day as the time of year for a behavioural reset.

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